Craig

Most men who are interested in women sexually (language chosen with care) will admit to immediately sizing up their sexual opportunities pretty well automatically. Others will just lie.

Ron

I agreed with your attack on Hazarika, Toynbee and Harman yesterday, for the same reasons as you and I’m a woman.

I quite enjoy it when men lust after me actually… I don’t have a hangup about being a woman.

Real women can handle men x

This is a refreshingly honest post, and I appreciate you attempting to come to terms with the problem you admit you have, rather than simply trying to justify past bad behaviour.

I would say though, and you may criticise me for being a radical militant feminist if you so desire, that I do wonder whether you’d have written a different post if you’d been told that your behaviour was merely wrong rather than symptomatic of an illness.

Actions matter. Men do, as a general rule, treat women differently depending on how they view their sexual chances with them. You may differ in degree but you do not differ in style. And yet, it is still wrong. “Everybody does it” is quite plainly not an excuse.

We are all biological creatures. But we are also creatures of intellect. Presume that all men act like you – I do – but presume that it is still beholden on you to behave differently. By all means keep writing about women being held back by the glass ceiling, or of their wit, charm and courage. But then ask yourself – do I also need to put in the part about her legs? If you would do the same for a male figure, then by all means. Perhaps that should be the guide. After all, that’s what “equality” actually means.

On the subject that sparked the whole thing, the vast majority of your post didn’t seem offensive at all to me. The target of your ire was quite clearly wasteful government spending. I’d agree that there’s no point in Harman having anybody on her staff to consult about women’s issues or feminism because she’s one of the most retrograde anti-feminists around. New Labour may not think they represent the patriarchy, but they are so paternalist in their mindset they cannot help but infantilise everyone in the country, and women (who have historically had to fight to be taken seriously anyway) have suffered possibly more than everyone else.

But in context, I do wonder whether it might have been helpful to be clearer about separating the subject of your ire from the potential collateral damage. If you have a history of such things and people are likely to assume – perhaps unfairly – that there is a hidden antifeminist agenda, it is probably worth taking more time and making it more explicit.

I would like to say that, particularly having read the post, I think this would be unfair. But then people have to do things that are unfair all the time because of people’s prior judgements. Women have to deal with the “hypersexualisation” of their lives on a daily basis. There are cushy non-jobs for women in Harman’s office now – of course there are! – but there have been cushy non-jobs for men in this country for all recorded history, while in general women have had to work twice as hard to watch men swan past them up the promotion ladder.

Life is unfair, sexism and gender inequality remains a problem. Perhaps imposing a level of unfairness on yourself might help people appreciate more that you want to change that.

Mentioning Tony Blair and Stephen Fry in the same post reminds me of this interview Fry did with Blair in 2007:

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page10937

It really soured my opinion of Fry. For such an intelligent man he seems to like without question those in power/authority, as far as I can tell. To have a nice wee chat with Tony Blair in 2007 and not even mention Iraq, let alone not punch him the c*** in the face and throw him out the nearest window, is indefensible in my opinion.

I still very much enjoy Fry and try to pretend that the interview never happened, but it tainted things rather a lot for me.

For goodness sake don’t bother about all this PC labelling, Craig. Desire, of itself, is never wrong: it’s how we act on it [or don't] that matters.

If it’s any comfort, having been involved for most of my life in work concerned with various aspects of sex – political, personal, therapeutic – I find myself agreeing more and more with Havelock Ellis [who was a far better researcher and more insightful pioneer on the topic than Freud] that far more nonsense is spouted about sex by so-called ‘experts’ than about anything else.

The great thing is to know oneself and endeavour to live according to our best lights. We’re none of us perfect; we’ve all been hurt and have hurt others in our personal dealings. Guilt doesn’t help: we must just pick ourselves up and resolve to do better.

Hope the new baby will be a gift of lasting joy for you both.

You sound like a really kind person. Do you realise how lovely it would be to have a man caring enough to have these worries? Nadira is lucky.

I always said you were completely off your trolley. How can somebody mentally ill for “Their whole adult life” ever have become an ambassador. No wonder you were sacked for being pig useless.

Gordon Smith and Jacqui Brown work hard to protect the British people. Your despicable attacks are only the noise of a madman.

Maybe the parliamentary human rights committee will be interested that you admit to not being fit to testify.

You criticised spads for telling the media you are mentally ill. But now everyone can see you are just a fruitcake who even talks about his perversions in public.

You have completely blown it this time Murray you should be locked up…AGAIN!!!!!

Everyone else,

Thank you.

Harry’s revenge

Well, one of us certainly sounds unwell. I know it has been a stressful time for NuLab trolls, but please calm down.

This link seems like light sensualism or speculation : but I don’t think the implications are incorrect. Men are often portrayed as being distracted and vulnerable to sex to a ridiculous degree – which would imperil a woman seeking a life partner should her programming run in the same fashion.

There’s a reason women dress to reveal bodies : men notice ! That’s not at all the same as spouting the unworkable drivel that this constitutes an open invitation to all comers.

http://www.morethings.com/senate/2004/06/copyright-law-as-corporate-welfare.html

What I’m saying is that the law regulates ‘impulse control’ regarding forced sex and accords special protection to the young. That implies the routine presence of such impluses, hm ?

I suspect you are overcompensating because your mental balance is suspect. You might note that is a long way from fostering moral turpitude. Don’t ‘sweat the small stuff’.

Whoops. That was from a LinkFest Link update. Here’s the right one http://www.squidoo.com/what_is_the_difference_in_way_men_and_women_think

‘I always said you were completely off your trolley. How can somebody mentally ill for “Their whole adult life” ever have become an ambassador. No wonder you were sacked for being pig useless.

Gordon Smith and Jacqui Brown work hard to protect the British people. Your despicable attacks are only the noise of a madman.

Maybe the parliamentary human rights committee will be interested that you admit to not being fit to testify.

You criticised spads for telling the media you are mentally ill. But now everyone can see you are just a fruitcake who even talks about his perversions in public.

You have completely blown it this time Murray you should be locked up…AGAIN!!!!!’

LOL. You really are a proper freak of humanity. The question is nature or nurture? Hmm…

Harry’s revenge said:

“Gordon Smith and Jacqui Brown work hard to protect the British people. Your despicable attacks are only the noise of a madman.”

===

Indeed they may well do, but I have never heard of either of them.

It’s only a pity that Gordon BROWN and Jacqui SMITH haven’t worked hard to protect the British people.

It’s a shame you couldn’t post your comment in green ink!

What I’m saying is that the law regulates ‘impulse control’ regarding forced sex and accords special protection to the young. That implies the routine presence of such impluses, hm ?

How far would you like to take that logic? Since the laws in Saudi Arabia don’t recognise rape to anywhere near the degree we do here, does that imply that westerners are more compelled to be rapists by instinct? Do laws against theft and assault indicate that everyone is a violent thief? That seems to be an amazingly weak line of argument.

I expect Gordon Smith and Jacqui Brown would do a better job than Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith.

Will they step forward, please?

As with race, we have an instinctual reaction and the it is our conduct that matters, our ability to realise that not all of our instincts should be trusted or expressed. You can also be too civilised, as I discovered. I once worked as an engineer in an envirnment where a number of colleagues, including superiors, were women. I was always scrupulously careful to avoid any inappropriate word or look. A female friend asked if I dealt any differently with the women than the men. Of course not – I said – they’re only engineers as far as I’m concerned. Oh dear – she replied – you won’t be very popular.

As Thurber pointed out, you might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards.

Good grief! A functioning libido? In this day and age? And the temerity to be perfectly open about it? Hark – I hear the crunching boots of the Sex Police approaching . . . .

Damn blockquote tags don’t work… That last comment was for Opit.

“In short, I do not acept the thesis that it demeans women to fancy them. It demeans anyone if you only fancy them.”

Of course it does, if, as you say, it results in your doing this:

“my mind instantaneously runs a sexualised check on her physical appearance and, if I find that appealing, I start acting in the way I can best calculate to enhace my chances.”

…when this is wrapped up as honesty. Because you are out to trick, trap, seduce – or con. You don’t do that to people if you respect them. It’s the insult of it that is my whole point.

Women see it a mile off, we’ve experienced it since before our first bra. If being yourself isn’t good enough, why orchestrate our being let down? For that is all you are going to achieve with this mirage. A genuine man (he can have desires – there’s not an issue – and say “all the right things”, if he honestly means them, when he feels he wants to…) is far more attractive.

It’s insulting to women that we have to be fooled, led or manipulated to want to be with you. Would a friend treat you this way – and be wanted as a friend.

As another comment said, “Real women can handle men”. Yes, but the usual drivel is boring. It’s only sad women that need a lift who fall for it, and therefore the relationship is a doomed one.

Real men act as if they know that we already know…

Sex; apparently feminists like McDuff don’t ‘suffer’ from it.

The only evolutionary function that sex has is to randomise the genetic code, else we would be clones.

It is therefore predictable that sex traits, like all other traits, will have a randomised normal distribution throughout all species that rely on sex for procreation.

Those fuckwits in the pseudo-science of psychiatry have labelled many natural behaviour variations as ‘mental’ conditions.

Schizophrenia is a condition with mental aberrations, and is therefore characteristic with delusional thinking; whereas hyperactivity and depression are not characterised by delusional thinking, but more the intensity of feelings.

So called mental disorders such as bipolar, ADHD, and various other inventions, are merely the invention of psychiatry to help their backward intellects to characterise nature, just like the real scientists do.

There is nothing wrong with you Craig, you are merely not popular with the other end of the ‘normal’ distribution of society.

‘All I can say in defence is that the book honestly reflects the way I think and feel.’

Like you Craig, I lived in Poland for a number of years.

That experience taught me that a eunoch would be ‘charmed’ if the conditions were right (to put up a tent is the local slang) and I am not noted for my eunochoidal behaviour.

So, speak your mind and don’t bother with the trolls who will fasten onto anything.

Sex; apparently feminists like McDuff don’t ‘suffer’ from it.

I love it. Talk about respect and trying to overcome social inequality and someone will come in and assume that you’re just a sex-hating lunatic. Let me guess, JimmyGiro, all I need is a good shagging, right? Bet you could come here and give it to me, that would sort me out.

Astoundingly, you might be amazed at the context. Not only am I male (a male feminist? Shocking!) I also have sex pretty regularly. And none of your boring sex either, because here’s the thing: because I’m a radical who thinks that women are fully actualised human beings and I don’t treat them entirely as sexual objects, I can have really good sex with them. Astounding, isn’t it? That a male with a high sex drive can still be aware of male privilege and the problems it causes for women and men.

This, incidentally, is not intended to criticise Craig, who has been honest about what he sees as a problem and his willingness to try and address it. It’s just absolutely astounding that men will always come out of the woodwork and defend the supposed right to behave as if we’re not intellectual and social creatures with more to us than our gonads.

For pity’s sake, do you neanderthals know how shit you make our gender sound? It’s not OK to be sexually manipulative any more than it’s ok to throw your own poo at people you don’t like. Seriously. Grow up.

Craig;

thank you for your opennes and honestly with us, I feel at home here when you share all your thoughts with us.

Harry is a disgrace, he is clearly mixing freedom of expression with freedom to offend.

Delete his comment,

kick him out

“It’s not OK to be sexually manipulative any more than it’s ok to throw your own poo at people you don’t like.”

All species are sexually manipulative. Otherwise peacocks wouldn’t have elongated upper tail coverts. Give it a break for pete’s sake. And watch some David Attenborough.

As for poo throwing: We only gave it up when we started wearing clothes and the dry-cleaning got too expensive.

In my experience (I’m female) the most obsessive feminists are male.

McDuff,

The nature of the erection and orgasm are actualized by the interplay of the psyche and hormones; I put it to you that it is impossible to achieve boring sex, as the erection and orgasm both require sexual excitement.

If men do not regard women as sexual objects, then are they not at risk of being asexual or perverted. What would stop the average man from regarding children and animals as sex objects if they liberated their evolved inhibitions on sexual objectivity?

And at what point do we privileged Neanderthals exploit sex:

(a) at the point of desire?

(b) at the point of purchase?

(c) at the commencement of foreplay?

(d) during penetration?

(e) during orgasm?

(f) or during remand after rape charge?

Your estimation of men seems to be based on their ‘sexual problems’ of having heterosexual desire; do we grow up in your feminist estimation by handing ourselves in to the nearest police station for having carnal desire.

We could help the bobby to trump up the charges by calling it ‘the near-actualization of pre-emptive rape upon a yet-to-consent post juvenile human female’.

I think I’ll rather not grow up thanx.

PS. Did you know that the Neanderthals may have become extinct because the males and females were too similar?

I’ve done some work supporting/counseling folks with bipolar disorder. One of the main features of this disorder is a desire/drive to be loved – worshiped even. So wit, charm, and seduction are tools used towards that end. Naturally, this can lead to all kinds of complications in one’s life. This is the price one pays for the high.

As for McGuff – yer a tool.

As a young bull I enjoyed the chase – the seduction. Every woman I’ve ever been with understands the chase – they enjoyed it just as much. Hell we’ve even turned it into an art form – it’s called the Tango.

“I really fancy her!” Said a friend, indicating a woman in the room. “Oh yes?” I replied.

“Yeah! I’d like to have sex with her!”

“Right,” I said.

“Only problem is,” my friend added, I think she’s 100% straight. Not into women, at all.”

Sexual attraction: It’s not just for those of us who are heterosexuals.

You call one Female Enablement junket a trip and you get called a sexist, not fair – a snipe. I commented, mainly in your memory, on someone (one person, not all concerned or a party) who is actually as near to old Labour as you can get these days and I get the troll moniker.

At the moment people are too concentrated on Nu Labour as there is blood in the water, doesn’t make them innocent but it gives people tunnel and usually those who are the most vehement have the least answers regarding what happens after.

If I disagree, I’m not trolling, I hope you take this sincerely

That aside, I know what you have to deal with(though each has their own tale) and that it can take a lot out of you and the people around you. Dear Lord the Doctors too. You see them on a good day and you are a time waster, you see them on a bad day and they want to dose you up to the eyeballs and make you a zombie. Short of a compound fracture I avoid them.

Can you write on bad days (or what ever you call them) or do you just write with a different voice as it were? If you don’t mind me asking?

It’s just I know that I have to double check my tone sometimes, what is a positive positive letter can end up sounding like a death knell.

As for diplomats, people in power, world leaders being unfit, Chruchill was on crack, Hitler was a smack-head and would stay in bed until 4pm for a long period (so he may not havee known what Goebbels was saying for a time), all types about, good and bad for reasons usually unrelated.

So I agree, I agree, some Labout twonk has spent stupid amounts in a very poor way, Hallelujah! I’ve seen the light. So can I leave the place under the bridge now? The wireless signal is really poor down here.

Mae

Mostly I can’t write on bad (depressive)days. But sometimes I do, and it tends to be notably more bitter, I think.

“Churchill was on crack”. What rubbish! How do you know? References please.

Nice post, but really Bro…sometimes you think with your dick instead of your brain…that is what I like about you !

Pick any source you want, he was given a refined form of cocaine, ie “crack” for what ever reason over prolonged periods.

The drug laws really have changed a lot, hell our pilots were on benzadrine, the german grunts were on speed. Yes to call it crack is pushing it but cocaine in a refined form all the same. We still use it now in hospitals, albeit as a local anesthetic.

Sorry not prolonged as in all the time, but every once in a while over a period of time, as it were.

Source: Queen Victoria’s Diary also includes recorded recreational use with WC.

Sorry not prolonged as in all the time, but every once in a while over a period of time, as it were.

Source: Queen Victoria’s Diary also includes recorded recreational use with WC.

No, I won’t “pick any source I want”. You made the allegation; you provide the substantiating evidence from somewhere else than out of your own head.

You’re an honest as well as brave man Craig.

How refreshing.

We’re all here because of the sexual impulse.

How refreshing.

The disappointing thing about the trolls here is that they don’t even check their rubbish diatribes. Harrys_Revenge makes the following slavish adulation:

> Gordon Smith and Jacqui Brown work

> hard to protect the British people.

I suspect Jackie Brown is probably a better description of the Home Sec than the poster realises: innocent people get killed, and the Special Adviser on shooting members of the public is Quentin Tarantino.

Erm, how about the knowledge in my head that it was available as an over the counter throat sweet until 1914 and after that continued to be used with a prescription?

I’ll get you a source sometime later today as you please, I thought this was common knowledge?

And the source won’t constitute a youtube video or link to another blog either. You’ll let me have Hitler as a smack head though, right? Just checking

I’m perfectly well aware of the pre-1914 supply position regarding drugs.

What you said was “Chruchill [sic] was on crack, Hitler was a smack-head.”

What I am asking you for is independent evidence as to those two people. Stop wriggling.

Also – just to clear the point in advance – the fact that someone takes or is prescribed a legal medication occasionally for a sore throat, as a painkiller, or whatever, doesn’t mean they are “on” it [i.e. addicted].

So what evidence do you have that Churchill was “on crack”? If you don’t have any, it’s just a smear, isn’t it?

“The nature of the erection and orgasm are actualized by the interplay of the psyche and hormones; I put it to you that it is impossible to achieve boring sex, as the erection and orgasm both require sexual excitement.”

Ah, I think I see your issue. Let me assure you, JimmyGiro, that it is indeed possible to have boring sex, and from the sounds of it you probably have plenty of unintentional experience.

“And at what point do we privileged Neanderthals exploit sex:

…

(b) at the point of purchase?”

Yup, that’s the one. You made that pretty easy, didn’t you? It’s the point where you reduce any sexual activity to a financial transaction where the woman ‘gives it up’ in response to your power play. Where you, intentionally or otherwise, reduce every sexual encounter you have to that of a whore and a john.

I mean, there are many other points too. There might be the point where you take too long to realise that the woman in the bar doesn’t want to come back to your hotel room after all, the point where you monopolise her attention because you think she just needs more convincing, the point where you drone on about your biological necessity to fuck as if that justifies any action, the point where you react aggressively to someone saying that women are people too by claiming that we’re the ones equating sex and rape (wheras I always thought I knew the difference which is why I never had any problems with excessively aggressive overdefensiveness about the issue).

Pretty much all of this is straight from the narrow pit of rage that is male privilege, which goes far beyond sex. It’s telling that your reaction to being told that society is set up to value you more simply because of your gender, in myriad ways that are obvious if only you’d look, isn’t even “that’s lucky for me!” or even “that does seem a little out of kilter, now that you mention it,” but rather to get angry and shout “no it iiisssn”tt. That’s just how we’re made. We’re nothing but animals! We can’t control how we behave at all! That’s why it’s totally unfair for people to tell us we’re behaving badly! And women who don’t like it are just frigid sexless bitches! Men who don’t like it too!”

Or, in other words, resort to throwing poo like the unevolved primate you insist you are.

“Your estimation of men seems to be based on their ‘sexual problems’ of having heterosexual desire; do we grow up in your feminist estimation by handing ourselves in to the nearest police station for having carnal desire.”

What an insane, strawman argument. I did wonder if I was being a bit harsh on you earlier, now the sheer aggressive defensiveness makes me think I probably erred on the side of caution in judging you an embarrassment to the gender.

Let me reiterate: it’s apparently you who doesn’t know how to tell the difference between sex and rape, not me. If you weren’t a sexual incompetent you’d be aware of things like “consent” or “female agency”. You might even be aware that sex isn’t so different from any other form of social interaction, inasmuch as it flows much better when there is mutuality between interested parties. Clodhopping buffoons who drift through life feeling as if their interest in women is a) something as natural as eating, that they nevertheless b) have absolutely no control over, but c) it’s fine because women should feel it a privilege to be desired, and d) therefore make no attempts to pay any attention to the object of their desire beyond their attempts to engage in carnal activities with them are not, my dear boy, doing anything wrong by being heterofuckingsexual. What they are doing wrong is being ignorant and boorish, which is not part of the standard definition of “heterosexual” although it is a definition of a very particular kind of overprivileged but immature straight male.

You might want to learn to tell the difference between your biological impulses and the way it is now expected that evolved beings behave in civilised societies. Every sexual creature has a drive to reproduce, as dreolin so elegantly points out. However, I don’t think it’s very flattering to the males in the room to so explicitly compare them to dogs who can’t control which leg they hump.

Everybody fucks. But everybody (allegedly) has a brain and should have been taught how to treat other people with respect too. If your biology begins to override your socialisation that is politely referred to as a Bad Thing.

I don’t know whether it’s a surprise to some of the male participants in this thread that women will quite often have sex with men even if they are not tricked into it or bought. Not that I’m opposed to prostitution, especially since for some men it may well be the most honest sexual encounter they ever have. If nothing else, I find that talking to women about sex as if they are equals in the sexual relationship leads to all kinds of interesting discoveries about sex that go beyond the mechanics of getting an erection and ejaculating at some point afterwards. I can do that much *myself*.

Can I just ask, the lot of you pseudo-alpha-males in here, how do you get so clueless as to go into a thread where someone is struggling with a mental illness and say “RIGHT ON, HURR!” That’s like going into a thread where someone’s dealing with depression and saying “don’t let a psychiatrist tell you not to top yourself, that’s your god given right, stick it to the establishment. With your penis!”

It seems that any inference, no matter how slight, no matter how much it can be reasonably claimed to not apply to them, that some male somewhere should modify his sexual behaviour to be less aggressive is met with the staunchest resistance imaginable. That’s insane in itself, when you think about it for even a second. Not that I’d accuse the pseudo-alpha-males here of doing something as unnecessarily feminine as ‘thinking’.

Also, what’s with the bizarre revisionism of anticant? I mean, not whether Churchill was on crack or cocaine or not, but on the idea that suggesting such a thing would have been a “smear” during WWII. The moral panic over stimulants is a relatively new fad, and I’m sure it will pass soon enough.

You rather miss the point. I was around during WW2 [you probably weren't]. Everyone knew Churchill kept afloat on copious amounts of brandy and other potent liquids; no-one thought any the worse of him for that. After all, he was keeping all the rest of us afloat at that time and we’d probably have sunk without him.

Suggesting – without any evidence – that he was a cocaine addict is something else. If he was, he wouldn’t sink in my estimation, though he might in a good many other peoples’ – which is the intention of the smear.

If asking for reliable proof of baseless assertions of that kind is “bizarre revisionism”, I suppose objecting to the squalid tosh cooked up by McBride and enthusiastically endorsed by Draper is too.

Some folk have an odd sense of values.

“Every sexual creature has a drive to reproduce, as dreolin so elegantly points out. However, I don’t think it’s very flattering to the males in the room to so explicitly compare them to dogs who can’t control which leg they hump.” –McDuff

Just a sec, Mr McDuff. The context was sexual manipulation. I referred to peacocks’ tail feathers, i.e. behaviour designed to attract attention. I didn’t mention dogs or humping or anyone not being able to control themselves.

Given your latest “essay” up above, you seem to prove my second point: that some of the most obsessive feminists are male. And you know what? They’re boring.

Peacocks tail feathers are only sexual manipulation if you have a brain the size of a pea hen’s, Dreolin. I assume you are not so biologically illiterate as to imagine it’s a comparison. By all means wear nice clothes and make yourself look pretty, my dear. But if you can’t work out the difference between that and the kind of manipulative action mentioned above then it doesn’t reflect well on you.

The “not being able to control oneself” was, of course, in response to another commenter. I gather that would have neutered your indignation though, so the oversight is understandable.

And of course you find feminism boring. You’re just a man and you’re not really interested in it, I wouldn’t expect you to be able to wrap your pretty little head around anything that nuanced.

‘Bipolar sexuality’ indeed!

Craig, the only difference between you and Mr Average is that you are refreshingly honest about it (clearly not always to your own advantage or to that of your now ex-wife) and have had a little more opportunity to taste the variety of life than those who gravitate from home to workplace to pub. But, given that -as with any appetite- there are some who can control their urges better than others, you don’t seem to be a rapist or even a sexual harasser and that’s to your credit. Many of your critics will be precisely that in their more secretive private lives. How do I know? Ask any woman. Your -and my- former colleague Clay Freud had a rather unpleasant side to him there. You’re a lucky man to have a new life with a woman who understands and shares your – bursting urge for a fling. Don’t let the jealous hypocrites convince you that there’s something wrong with you. There isn’t. There’s something wrong with THEM.